The story behind Nas and Frank Ocean’s lost collaboration
Nas and Frank Ocean once collaborated on a song called ‘No Such Thing As White Jesus’, but unfortunately, the track never saw the light of day. A combination of lost files and bad timing means the track probably won’t ever be released.
The song was recorded in 2012 after originally being a recording between just Frank Ocean and producer Hit-Boy. Nas eventually hopped on the record when Hit-Boy played it during a studio session for Life Is Good, but the producer ended up losing the hard drive that contained the audio file. This meant the track had no chance of appearing on either of Frank Ocean’s channel ORANGE or Nas’ Life Is Good albums.
Fortunately, the hard drive was recovered in 2014 along with a bunch of Kanye West’s music, but ‘No Such Thing As White Jesus’ never received an official release. “They had packed it up with Kanye’s shit, which I always felt,” he told Hip-Hop Wired. “It was supposed to be there. We are going to figure something out. It’s just dope so I don’t know when it’ll be out.”
When asked about the infamous track in 2022, Hit-Boy revealed the song had actually already been released — just without Frank Ocean’s contribution. “That song actually ended up coming out on Lost Tapes 2,” he revealed to HipHopDX. “But [Nas] had somebody else sing the hook that Frank wrote.”
Although Hit-Boy didn’t reveal which track he was referencing, Hit-Boy only produced one song on the album: ‘Royalty’. Instead of Frank Ocean, Carson singer RaVaughn appears on the hook, but the personnel does include a writing credit for the ‘Novacane’ singer. Lost Tapes 2 was released in 2019 and served as the sequel to Nas’ classic 2002 compilation.
Hit-Boy described ‘No Such Thing As White Jesus’ as “classic Frank” with a “nostalgic” feeling during an interview with DJBooth in 2018. “I don’t think it’s gonna see the light of day, but the hook is amazing!” he said. “It’s just classic Frank over some hip-hop shit I produced.”
He continued, “It had a feeling! I pride myself on having beats that have a feeling to them, and obviously, Frank Ocean is still out here, so I think it would still have that feeling. It was nostalgic, it had a nice groove to it. It felt good.”
Despite fans missing out on a potentially great collaboration, it was just the start of big things to come for Hit-Boy. The demo was the starting point for a relationship between Nas and Hit-Boy, who combined for the entirety of Nas’ last six albums.
The pair teamed up King’s Disease, King’s Disease II, Magic, King’s Disease III, Magic 2 and Magic 3 between 2020 and 2023, with the first King’s Disease project winning Best Rap Album at the Grammys.